


Good Night, and Good Luck

by persnickett



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types
Genre: Bittersweet, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 13:31:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16220069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persnickett/pseuds/persnickett
Summary: If you love something, set it free.





	Good Night, and Good Luck

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Blood Culmination](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14956967) by [persnickett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/persnickett/pseuds/persnickett). 



> Alby can’t help but notice the way Newt notices the new Greenie noticing him. 
> 
>  Just a short little standalone piece, inspired by how these three can’t stop looking over their shoulders at one another at the end of [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtVgfsONnps).  
> Bittersweet, fair warning. <3 'Snick

 

“So. New Greenie’s pretty cute.”

 

Alby surprised himself, with how easily the words came out. Hardly sounding forced or rehearsed at all.

 

They were a little leaden now, maybe. Hanging heavily there in the night air, but they were out. And that was what mattered.

 

He couldn’t bring himself to turn around just yet, though, pulling off his shirt and tossing it at the chair in the corner. The lantern on the bedside table guttered in the breeze it made, flickering the entire Homestead bedroom into darkness and back, like the winking of an ever-watching gaze.

 

Newt was smiling though, when he turned around, a bemused crinkle drawing his brows together. His eyes stayed elusively downcast however, Alby couldn’t help but notice.

 

“What’s this then?” Newt asked, pulling the hoodie off over his head, and tossing it after Alby’s shirt. It fit Alby just fine, but it was always comically oversized on Newt’s slim frame, even though he was the slightly taller of them. Alby always liked it better on him. “Are you asking my _permission_?”

 

“Nope,” Alby replied. He started on unbuttoning his pants, but stopped shy of taking them off, suddenly feeling like he was already exposed enough.  “…I’m giving mine.”

 

He watched it happen, this time. The parade of thoughts that always marched across Newt’s features before he opened his mouth. Always thinking first, and cracking wise second.

 

Despite what some of the others might like to think, his endless need to understand, to consider all the angles before he made a move, was the biggest part of what made Alby choose him for his Second. What had made him choose Newt for his bed… well Alby couldn’t pretend that had been much of a choice at all. Maybe something had chosen them. You never knew, in this place.

 

He watched Newt’s features move through amusement, consideration, and something heart-wrenchingly like hurt, before they resolved themselves, landing on the realization this wasn’t Alby’s idea of a joke.

 

And then he watched them reset themselves again, into a mask of mischief, as Newt obviously settled on the decision to continue teasing him anyway.

 

“So it’s finally happened then,” Newt said, pulling his singlet off now, and knowing what he looked like, standing bare-chested in the flame-coloured light of the lantern. Every plane and angle of his lean, sinewed physique painted in gilt and shadow to the best advantage. “You’re trading me in for some newer model? Shall I go fetch little Chuckie and give him the old Birds and Bees chat?”

 

Newt’s hair stuck up in awkward, obstinate places where removing his shirts had disturbed it. He knew what that did to Alby too.

 

“Pipe it,” Alby warned, stepping closer without resistance, to smooth his hand over the scruffy spots on the crown of Newt’s head, and set them back to rights. Even though they were about to climb into bed and Newt would inevitably wake in the morning with the wildest, most spectacular showing of bedhead Alby had ever known anyone to be able to achieve. “’Sassing the Leader’ isn’t an offense for the Slammer _yet_ , but I’m considering making it one.”

 

Newt smiled.

 

There was some part of him that loved Newt, God help him. But that same part had known for some time – maybe all along – that while Newt cared for him, it was never returned; had never connected, and found its home in the mirroring part of Newt that should have answered it, and taken it in.

 

There had been a time when Newt _needed_ him, of course. After the day he went out into the Maze and came back changed. And Alby could never bring himself to regret it, being the balm that seeped in between the fractured pieces, filling him in and soothing him in the broken places. He should probably count it some kind of honour, being the one to cover this fallen angel’s body with his own, whisper the words in the dark that would slowly call him back, little by little each night, to the person he had been before.

 

 

Alby’s hand had moved from Newt’s hair to rest on his bare shoulder.

 

He knew he would do it if Newt asked him to – push him back up against the bed, and down to the mattress, force the long, slender arms up over the golden, tousled head and make him a farewell neither of them would soon forget. He had never been able to deny him anything, after all, this boy with his heart in his hands and eyes like a starless night.

 

It was how they ended up here in the first place.

 

They had never discussed it, never made each other any promises. And it was likely that they had both known, somewhere underneath it all, where they never liked to look too hard, that this day would come.

 

And now Alby found himself caught, not knowing which to pray for; that Newt would grant it to him, or spare him of it – the racing of his pulse, the wandering heat and growing urgency of Newt’s touch, the hot demand in his kisses, and the salt-sweet taste of his skin – all the while knowing that each of them would be the last.

 

But Newt didn’t ask him. Didn’t reach for him.

 

Newt just nodded. And it was there in his eyes. Those starless, dark eyes, always lit somehow from their depths with a glint that was both merry and sad at once – heartbreakingly wise beyond their unnaturally short years.

 

It was an understanding. The confirmation he didn’t need of what it was Alby had seen tonight.

 

Because those eyes had never looked at him the way he’d seen them look by the fire tonight, soft-pupiled with too much of Gally’s liquor, but alive with interest and movement, flitting blithely all over the Newbie like they were trying to memorize every inch of him at once, to drink him in like a draught of Gally’s moonshine, and hold him there for the keeping.

 

“Al… You know I always—"

 

“I always will too, man.”

 

Another nod.

 

Newt had tried before, to _thank_ him. It wasn’t something Alby cared too much to hear. The idea that it had been some kind of favour, a service, for Alby to have spent their time together fixing him rather than simply loving him.

 

He didn’t want Newt’s thanks. Didn’t want to pretend giving in to the temptation of Newt had ever been anything like noble.

 

It had felt anything but noble today, when Newt had rocked up to introduce himself to the new Greenie, and Alby saw it happen as if in slow motion – the Greenie’s stricken, stunned look, Newt’s amused reaction. There was nothing gallant about the hasty way Alby had dismissed him, hustling him off to go and find Chuck, even though Newt had been the one taking the Greenies under his wing as a matter of course for months now. And there was definitely nothing gentlemanly in the way he had to remind himself to keep the roughness out of his grip as he reached out to turn the Greenie’s attention forward again, when he couldn’t stop looking back over his shoulder at Newt.

 

Then when he turned back himself, only to see Newt glancing over his shoulder for another look at the Greenie too, just as slyly? There was absolutely nothing noble about the greedy, ravening pit that opened in his gut, making him want to get Newt alone and do things they hadn’t done in weeks now, months.

 

But that was before he had seen them together at the fire.

 

Newt looking the Newbie over like he had never looked at him, openly and simply wanting. Newt deserved that, to _want_ something again. Or maybe for the first time, in his memory.

 

Besides, damned if the Greenie – Thomas, as he guessed they were supposed to call him now – wasn’t eyeing Newt up and down right back.

 

The silence was heavy, as they finished undressing and moved to the bed, but there was nothing cold or sharp in it. There was a warmth in the understanding between them, almost as if the whole room had wrapped them together in a blanket.

 

They pulled back the covers and Alby snuffed the lantern.

 

The kiss was as familiar as it was unexpected when it came, out of the dark. Chaste but lingering, warm and echoing with the tastes of all the ones to come before it – old needs and desperation and hungers now grown cooled and quiet.

 

There was gratitude in it, and maybe this time Alby could accept it, Newt’s thanks for this, for giving him his freedom.

 

There was peace in it too, for both of them.

 

“Good night, Newt.”

  
Nothing had changed, really. This was things as they had been for months between them now. It wasn’t goodbye, not really.

 

 “’Night Al.”

 

It was just good night.

 

 

 

 


End file.
